Horse Lake

Horse Lake sits at a C on the grading scale — not impaired, not pristine, with summer measurements that vary year to year. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

A TSI near 49 places Horse Lake in the mesotrophic band — moderate productivity, with seasonal swings between clearer spring water and richer late-summer conditions. The lake bottoms out at 25 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. Horse Lake covers 715 acres alongside 13.4 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Within Lake County's 142 graded lakes, Horse Lake ranks 99 — below the local median, though not at the bottom.

Horse Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2024, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. The state fisheries records do not list documented species for Horse Lake, which usually reflects a lack of formal fisheries survey work rather than an empty lake. No formal public access is documented at Horse Lake — most use is by shoreline residents and their guests. Monitoring depth is thin here: the LakeGrade rubric is applied to a small number of sample years, and the grade will be revised as more data accumulates.